A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

Canada has the same problem. I don’t have definitive data, but the promo pricing for internet plans has seemed pretty weak since COVID hit. We call our ISP every (fucking) year to ask them to give us the current promo pricing for the next year and this year everything is a solid $20-$40 per month higher than it’s been in the last 3-4 years.

They’re totally price gouging IMO.

I'm always surprised this isn't discussed more.

Big tech is accused of being monopolistic, but there is a constant flow of new players in the field, all gaining market shares and building the Next Big Thing, while telecom providers are pretty stagnant.

I'm curious why cities don't directly lay down the infrastructure work for broadband access. In some cases that might raise property value enough that the town could make it's money back in very little time.

Seriously, I feel like I say it every time it comes up: WHY aren't people taking action against ISP monopolies?

It seems like such a cut-and-dried political issue: they're utilities and they overcharge you whether you're a Republican or Democrat. And taking action doesn't require new antitrust concepts, because it's just your garden-variety utility. It's the same established principles as electric or natural gas.

Yet bizarrely this doesn't show up as an issue on Republican or Democrat platforms. Going after Google and Amazon and Facebook's free products is the sexy new issue, but the fact that we're all overpaying hundreds of dollars a year for broadband is just massively ignored.

And I'm not talking about politicians being bought. It baffles me why voters aren't writing letters to their city councils, their mayors, their state reps, their governors. If voters actually care, politicians do respond.

It would seriously be so easy to change if the voting population actually did care about it. But, inexplicably, we just pay the fees and deal with the crappy customer service and complain, but it never seems to occur to anybody to actually organize local political action against it.

It's utterly baffling.

It's a good question, but I think one of the issues is that physical networks are a natural monopoly in the same way as most public utilities, so it's not just about enabling more competition but about establishing a regulatory framework around that competition, much like exists with airports and railways. OR, alternatively, changing to a public sector provision model like plumbing or roads.

What actually bothers me the most is the rules that (in most places) prohibit cities and towns from offering new municipal broadband service as a competitive offering. This used to be more common in smaller towns that had not been able to get good commercial service, and it adds valuable options and competition, but my understanding is that it's extremely hard for cities who don't already have municipal broadband to start offering it now.

Local Loop Unbundling works fine in the UK